Changes under consideration by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS) could increase town office workloads and costs to municipalities.
Jefferson Town Clerk Lynne Barnikow told the Jefferson Board of Selectmen, Aug. 13, that the changes to general assistance (GA) rules would require municipal officials to take on tasks currently carried out by DHHS.
Barnikow was responding to an email message sent to key municipal officials July 31 by Maine Municipal Association Senior Legislative Advocate Kate Dufour.
Dufour wrote to notify officials of recommendations made by the nine-member General Assistance Working Group convened by DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew, under the direction of the Legislature, to review the state’s GA program.
The goal of the review is to reduce the DHHS budget by making recommendations for cutting $500,000 from the state’s share of the GA budget in the current fiscal year, which will end on June 30, 2013.
General Assistance programs provide financial assistance to eligible residents, based on need.
Municipalities are required by state law to administer a GA program, Dufour said Aug. 27. Those administrative costs are paid for through local property taxes. The state currently reimburses GA costs, at a rate of 50 percent for all but the large service center communities of Portland, Bangor, Caribou and Lewiston.
“When you do the math, it’s about a $16 million program,” Dufour said. “The state pays about $10 million.”
Dufour is part of the working group commissioned by the Legislature to find savings in the program.
“The state decided that their $10 million share was too much and the governor proposed a budget that really cut that program,” she said. Dufour said a number of ideas were proposed to meet the governor’s budget.
“At the end of the day, the Legislature made two changes,” she said.
One change was a limit of nine months on the amount of housing assistance a client can receive. That change was placed in effect for the 2012 fiscal year only. Towns may override the limit in emergencies.
Clients waiting for approval to receive supplemental security income (SSI) are also exempt from the nine-month limit. The Legislature also temporarily reduced reimbursement rates to GA service providers.
A report from the working group to contain final recommendations must be presented to the Legislature by Dec. 1.
Dufour said she alerted municipal officers to the proposals because she wants to make sure she represents them in her role in the working group.
The preliminary recommendations include a proposal to require the certification of all GA administrators.
According to Dufour’s message, municipalities interested in being certified to administer the GA program would have to meet five standards, including an administration cost threshold.
Municipalities would be required to obtain online access to the state’s database. Towns would have a number of years, yet to be determined, to acquire all the hardware and software necessary to meet that requirement.
“They’re trying to confuse everything,” Barnikow told Jefferson selectmen. She said the rules could increase workloads and put more responsibility on towns.
She said DHHS currently cross-checks applications to ensure that information given by clients is accurate and that the new rules might require towns to have separate, secure computers to connect with the state’s database.
“This is going to impact a lot of towns,” Barnikow said. “Towns don’t want to increase budgets and this could mean the need to hire more municipal employees.”
“Administrators would be responsible for either guiding GA clients through the process of obtaining SSI benefits or referring clients to a state-level disability advocate,” Dufour wrote in her July 31 message.
“Municipal officials would be responsible for keeping up-to-date on the many programs and services provided by other entities, including Maine State Housing Authority and Veterans’ Administration,” she said.
Dufour said general assistance eligibility applications would be standardized, with municipalities being able to add to, but not remove, any questions on the form.
“The purpose of the standardized application is to ensure that all clients are treated equitably in the process of determining eligibility and the level of financial assistance provided,” according to Dufour.
A new reimbursement form, designed to ensure that DHHS is collecting the data necessary to properly assess the impacts and benefits of the GA program, and to provide information to the state level policymakers, would be mandatory for all municipalities.
Administrative costs would not be allowed to exceed a certain percentage of the costs of benefits issued.
A change designed to ensure that the program is uniformly administered throughout the state would determine that an emergency situation in one municipality is also considered an emergency in the next.
“The proponents of this proposal claim that the discretion currently provided to administrators results in clients being treated differently from municipality to municipality,” Dufour wrote.
“To address this concern, the proponents of the change believe that DHHS should be charged with developing a rule guiding the determination of an emergency.” She said some in the working group believe the current flexibility ensures clients get the assistance they need, when they need it.
“Some GA administrators are concerned that the unintended consequences associated with a uniform definition of emergency will tie the hands of administrators in efforts to help clients,” Dufour wrote.
“Any discussion on what may occur and the impact of possible decisions is moot until the work group issues a final report and the proposal has been submitted to the legislature,” DHHS Director of Public and Employee Communications John Martins wrote in response to a request for comment. Martins did not reply to specific questions raised by this story.
The General Assistance Working Group will meet on the first and third Tuesday of each month, between now and Nov. 13. They will also meet Tues., Oct. 30. Meetings are held in the HHS Committee Room 209 of the Cross State Office Building in Augusta. For more information, visit the website at maine.gov/dhhs/ga.
